Roger Zelazny: To Die In Italbar

"Your clothing--"

"I disrobe first. My body carries nothing when I awaken. I change clothes afterward."

"How long does this--balance--last?"

"Usually a couple days, and then I revert--slowly. Once the balance is destroyed I become progressively dangerous again. I become a disease-bearer until the next catharsis-coma."

"When did you last undergo this coma?"

"I just woke up a few hours ago. I haven't eaten anything since. That sometimes seems to prolong the safe period."

"You are not hungry, after all that time?"

"No. In fact, I feel very strong--powerful, you might even say. But I do get quite thirsty. I am just now, in fact."

"There is a water cooler in the next room," said Helman, rising. "I'll show you."

Heidel placed his cigar in tile ashtray and stood.

As they were passing through the side door, the man Helman had spoken with earlier entered the room, holding a sheaf of crystal-extrusion reports and a small envelope which Heidei judged to contain his med-ident crystal. Dr. Helman gestured toward the water cooler and, when Heidel nodded, turned back into the room they had departed.

Heidel began filling and draining a small paper cup. As he did this, he noted the tiny green Strantrian good luck mark painted on the side of the cooler.

Somewhere between the fifteenth and twentieth cup, Dr. Helman entered tile room. He held tile papers in one hand. Passing Heidel the envelope, he said, "We had better take your blood right now. If you will come with me to tile laboratory, please ..."

Heidel nodded, disposed of the cup, returned his crystal to its case.

He followed the doctor out of the room and walked with him to an old-fashioned lift. "Six," said the doctor to the wall, and tile lift closed its door and began its ascent.

"The reports are strange," he said, after a time, gesturing with the papers he held.

"Yes, I know."

"There is something here to the effect that your mere proximity after a coma will often result in arrest and reversal of disease."

Heidel tugged his ear and regarded his boot tops.

"That is correct," he said, finally. "I didn't mention it because it smacked of faith healing or something of that sort, but it seems to be the case. The use of my blood at least provides a somewhat scientifically acceptable explanation. I can't explain the other."

"Well, we'll stick to the serum for the Dorn girl," said Helman. "But I wonder if you would be willing to participate in an experiment afterward?"

"What sort of experiment?"

"Visit all my terminal patients with me. I shall introduce you as a colleague. Then you speak with them briefly. About anything."

"All right. I'll be glad to."

"Do you know what will happen?"

"It will depend upon the conditions from which they are suffering. If it is a disease I've had, it may go away. If it is something involving major anatomical damage, the condition will probably remain unchanged."

"You have done this before?"

"Yes, many times."

"How many diseases have you been exposed to?"

"I don't know. I'm not always aware of taking one. I don't know what I'm carrying around inside me. --You being willing to try me on them this way," said Heidel, as the lift halted and the door opened, "that's interesting. Why not use my serum on everybody, now that you have me here?"

Helman shook his head.

"These reports only tell me what it has proven specific against in the past. So I'll trust it--well, try it, I should say-- on the Dorn girl. None of my other terminals fit your list, though. I would not risk it."

"Yet you would try the other?"

Helman shrugged.

"I am quite open-minded about these things," he said, "and there would be no risk. It certainly can't do them any harm, at this point. --The lab's at the end of this hall."

As he waited for his blood to be drawn, Heidel stared out the window. In the late morning light of that giant sun, he saw no fewer than four churches of as many different religions, as well as a flat-roofed wooden building, the face of which was covered with ribbons and tacked-on devotions, much on the order of one he had seen in the village beside the River Bart. Squinting, turning his head, leaning far forward, he could also make out tile aboveground structure which indicated a Pei'an shrine below, far up the road to his right. He grimaced and turned away from the window.

"Roll up your sleeve, please."

John Morwin played God.

He manipulated the controls and prepared the birth of a world. Carefully ... The rosy road from the rock to the star goes _there_. Yes. Hold. Not yet.

The youth stirred on the couch at his side but did not awaken. Morwin gave him another whiff of the gas and concentrated on the work at hand. He ran his forefinger beneath the front edge of the basket which covered his head, to remove perspiration and the latest attack of a recurring itch in the vicinity of his right temple. He stroked his red beard and meditated.

It was not vet perfect, not yet the thing the boy had described. Closing his eyes, he looked farther into the dreaming mind beside him. It was drifting in what he took to be the proper direction, but the feeling he sought was not there.

Waiting, he opened his eyes and turned his head, studying the fragile, sleeping form--the expensive garments, the thin, almost feminine face--that wore the mate of his basket, connected to his own by a maze of electrical leads, the narcoticbearing airjet fluttering the jacket's lacy collar. He pursed his lips and frowned, not so much with disapproval as with envy. One of his great regrets in life was that he had not grown up in the midst of wealth, been indulged, spoiled, turned into a fop. He had always wanted to be a fop, and now that he could afford it, he discovered that he lacked the proper upbringing to carry the thing successfully.

He turned to stare at the empty crystal giobe before him-- a meter in diameter, nozzles penetrating it at various points.

Push the proper button and it will be filled with swirling motes. Transfer the proper sequence and it will be frozen there forever ...

He reentered the boy's dreaming mind. It was wandering once again. The time had come to introduce stronger stimuli than the suggestions he had employed.

He threw a switch. Softly, then, the boy heard his own recorded voice, as he had spoken earlier in describing the dream. Then the images shifted and from within the dreaming mind he felt the click of _d_j_ vu_, the sensation of the appropriate, the feeling of desire achieved.

He depressed the button and the nozzles hissed. At the same moment, he threw the switch which severed the connection between his mind and that of his client's son.

Then, with his powerful visual memory and the telekinetic ability which only he among those few creatures possessing it could employ in this fashion, he laid his mind upon the swarming particles within the crystal. There he hurled the key instant of the dream he had snatched from the mind of its dreamer, its form and its color--the dream of a sleeper still informed with something of a child's exuberance and wonder--and there, within the crystal, with the mashing of another button, he froze it forever. Another, and tile nozzles were withdrawn. Another, and the crystal was sealed--never to be broached again without destroying the dream. A switch, and the recorded voice was stilled. As always, he found then that he was shaking.

He had done it again.

He activated the air cushion and withdrew the supports, so that the crystal floated before them. He lowered the black velvet backdrop and turned on concealed lights, adjusting them so that they struck the thing perfectly.

It was a somewhat frightening tableau: something part man was twisted snakelike about orange rocks which were also a part of itself, and it looked back upon itself to where it was joined with the ground; above it, the sky was partly contained in the arc of an upflung arm; a rosy road led from a rock to a star; there was a moistness like tears upon the arm; blue forms were in flight below.